There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gasman at the Opera and of his two assistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine!⁠ ⁠… What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again?⁠ ⁠… She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe.⁠ ⁠… They took the train one day from “the northern railway station of the world.”⁠ ⁠… Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valérius, who disappeared at the same time!⁠ ⁠… Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music!⁠ ⁠…